


Undone

by Kypros



Category: Motorcity
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing had been more wrong than this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Done for the motorkink prompt "sexual attraction".

Mike’s lungs were burning, filled with the rancorous, nostril scorching scent of melting plastic and chip board circuits, cut thickly with an overpowering presence of gasoline that made him want to gag. But things like this—like his own personal safety and well being— were inconsequential.  It didn’t matter that every tendon in his body was screaming. It didn’t matter that the adrenaline was fading, leading to an uncomfortable awareness of the scorching shove of blood that pushed hummingbird-quick through his veins. His own body’s complete failure to adjust to the scene of the accident did not shock him, nor did the lancing sensation akin to liquid metal skittering across his skin, sending his nerves into overdrive.  His own injuries were of no importance to him.

What did matter was Julie.

There had been no coherent space for thinking in that flash moment, seconds before his own car collided with the crumbling freeway when he caught site of a yellow blur careen dangerously over the edge and into the unknown. Caught by rusting rebar and the horrifically bright cadences of the automated explosions, he watched both Julie and her car disappear. She was swallowed by the falling pavement and slammed by shifting support beams for all of three seconds before she had spiralling out of control. Then, there was nothing—just empty space and blackened pavement where rubber had burned into the tarmac.

In response, he had collided head on with a mess of falling suspension cables tangled amidst recently uprooted support anchors. Chuck nearly had a heart attack, and looking back, he supposed this inability to properly control his car in the wake of watching Julie fly off into the abyss should have been the first sign.

But what really derailed him, and I mean what  _really_  left him in a numb wake that was both alternatively hilarious and chest-gouging was the near nonexistent space that now existed between them. Mike, in between the desperate, near frantic prying of her tangled seatbelt caught on the twisted frame of her car, could feel Julie’s bony hip against his stomach. And at some point amidst the breathy rasps as he called out her name ( _Julie_ – goddamit,  _Julie_  –  _wake up!_ ) and the waves of restless anxiety that were bubbling out the vents of his ribcage, it happened. Something inside him clicked; a switch turned on—a light went off.

Julie, for all the things that she wasn’t, like subtle or demure, quiet and subdued, was a girl. Yes, she was brash and headstrong and stubborn as a goddamn mule, but she was  _a girl._  The clarity in which he suddenly understood this particular fact was startling. He could see it in the tilt of her chin, curved softly, prettily, and covered with the tiniest spattering of blood. He could see it her lips, red with lipstick that smeared slightly across her cheek. It was in her hands, small and childlike; in her shoulders, soft and sloping. It was in the fall of her chest, barely breathing, but alive.

This revelation—this psychological nuance—hit him hard. As he struggled with her belt, desperation quickly turned to frustration. His chest ached, home to a coiling mass of nerves and dysphoria that were bundled tightly in the very pit of his stomach. The feeling spread quickly, like a cancerous disease until there was no part of him left untouched.  He tried to inhale past it, but the knot was hot and thick and foreign, choking him and sending him into unfamiliar territory that made it near impossible to breath, let alone speak.

Momentarily, he became undone. In a final tug of exasperation, the belt finally snapped and Julie tumbled forward like a ragdoll.  Mike was there to catch her, but he did not move.  In the wreckage of the crash, he was trying very hard to come to terms with all of this and yet every ounce of his awareness was focused not on the issue at hand, but rather on the soft exhale of Julie’s breath catching the curve of his neck. And when after a moment there was still no specific burst of agony hailing from his brain, no voice inside his head that was screaming at him that all of what he was thinking was a very terrible idea (because here she was, Julie—you know, Julie who can fix a car and eat a burger faster then Texas can?), all he could do was swear.

“ _Shit_.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mike sat on the steps of a derelict apartment building, his feet resting barefoot against the cool of the concrete, boots lazily kicked off and thrown to the wayside. The hazy lights of the city were aeons away, obscured by dilapidated freeways and the rusting menagerie of hollowed out car frames and forgotten tire rims that acted as a barrier between him and the rest of old Detroit.

All of this and it did not stop Julie from finding him.

It had been nearly a month since that night on the falling freeway and when he hears the scraping of footsteps on the rusty metal fire escape up to the rooftop, he is almost tempted to go inside and bar the door. He doesn’t. Instead, his memory pools in the flow of an alcoholic embrace and he thinks of the accident and how he pulled a barely breathing body from a crushed car frame. And her blood—he thinks of that too—which was so red...and her breathing, which was so shallow. She had told him feeble lies about how she was going to be okay and how the accident didn’t matter. It did. They had patched her up they best they could and slowly, Julie had disappeared into the winding tunnels of the East Gate leading her back to Detroit Deluxe. For a week they had waited for her return, only to have Claire show up in her stead.

“Julie won’t be back for a while,” she had told them. She had offered them nothing else beyond these quietly spoken words.  

Mike could not have been more upset. He had sunk into a pattern of two am insomnia followed by late night drives over crumbling freeways and collapsed parking garages. It seemed he could never drive fast enough. And when he did sleep, when he did finally manage to close his eyes, it wasn’t the orderly dreams of a supposed level-headed leader that occurred. No—instead he dreamed of Motorcity midnights with dog fights in the streets. Of heels pounding on pavement, feet stumbling over cracked concrete. Successful missions at 3 am. Sunset yellow cruisers and blinding smiles. Saturday nights spent wasted in laughter at the Burners’ Garage and Sunday mornings eating breakfast at Jacobs’.

But mostly…mostly, he just dreamed of her. It didn’t ever last long—she was always disappearing, there one minute and gone the next. Flash, bang, and a fire. Then, he would wake up. His chest would hurt, like he was suffocating and drowning on air, but he told nobody and nobody knew. You see, he knew why this was happening—oh yes, he knew. Still, it had been four weeks, and he couldn’t get the feel of Julie off of his skin.

“Mike—,”

Her voice was tentative and quiet and he did not respond, merely turned his head slightly to the left as to catch her gaze and drew her towards him. She responded in kind and he noticed that as she approached her arm was in a swarthy cast and that she was walking with a slight limp. His head snapped back towards the hazy horizon and without thinking, he took another slow sip of his lukewarm beer.

“Chuck told me I’d find you out here.” She sat down next to him and focused herself on the beer in his hand. If she objected to his incidental drinking, she did not say it, and instead let out a sleepy sigh. “Didn’t he tell you I’d be coming tonight?”

Mike nodded a gradual yes and set the murky brown bottle down onto the concrete next to him. He thought of a million things he could say, like how he was so worried for her, or how she should have been more careful that evening or even that he was confused by her now, so utterly and unabashedly confused. He said none of these things and instead closed his eyes.

“Go home, Julie,” is all he tells her.

His words feel ashy on his tongue, deadened by a month of too much worrying and not enough sleep and when Julie shifts ever so slightly to raise her voice in obvious objection, his eyes flick quickly to her discontented gaze.

“You could have died.” He cuts her off before she even has the chance to begin.

There is a moment—three seconds perhaps—when Julie contemplates her own mortality. He can see it out of the corner of his eyes as she bites her lips and her gaze dips low, but then she is shrugging and that _look_ is back, as suddenly she is Julie again (defiant and brave and bold).

“But I didn’t,” she tells him ever so firmly. Julie always has all the answers, even when they’re the wrong ones.

“But you could have.”

“Mike—,”

He snaps.

“ _I_ said _go home, Julie_.”

Momentarily there is silence and he thinks Julie might snap back at him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gets up and kicks the bottle sitting next to him, sending it careening across the rooftop. The remaining warm liquid sloshes out and trickles towards him in a slow and steady stream.

“You’re not going to stop me.”

He can tell that he’s angered her, but before he has the chance to respond, she is at the fire escape and slowly climbing over the edge.

“ _Julie_ —,” He tries in exasperation to stop her—if he could only make her see reason—but he’s too late, and below him he can hear a car engine starting and the overpowering drone of a heavy foot on the accelerator.


End file.
